


Spire of Stars

by Wecanhaveallthree



Category: Warhammer 40.000
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-08
Updated: 2019-11-08
Packaged: 2021-01-25 07:57:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,855
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21352855
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wecanhaveallthree/pseuds/Wecanhaveallthree
Summary: Atop the Spire of Stars on glorious Olympia, the Lord of Iron prepares himself for a different kind of war.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 16





	Spire of Stars

This has ever been a world of beauty. The sweeping valleys and basins, threading their clear waters through the deep, unseen veins of colossal mountains crowned with white haloes. At sunset, the clouds seem to come alight, their stately procession like a river of flame across the sky. It is not a simple majesty: it is a harmony of natural forces above, looking down upon the works of mortal hands below.

Industry is heavily regulated, efficiently organised -- not from heavy-handed laws, but through the intrinsic pride of the people. They will not sacrifice their beloved home for a half-step along the long road of progress. The terrors of Old Night still linger in the scarred shadows, the equatorial craters, the thatched pattern of dried riverbeds whose course has run dry.

One needs only to look at the fortress-bastions of every city-state worthy of the name, tucked away in headlands and strongpoints like an array of beautiful marbles. Each a different hue, flying a different banner, proclaiming a different culture. Guarded in all but their undying love for their planet.

It is a calculated scene, but no less beautiful for it.

The Spire of Stars is a work of art, but it is not perfect. It is an edifice founded on a thousand concessions. It rises not into the restricted airspace where Storm Eagles run their training overflights, though its dimensions beg that it should. It contains living quarters for a whole company, though in truth it is more a laboratory or workshop than anything resembling a barracks.

And the dining balcony is, of course, the greatest concession of all. Void shield generators are cunningly worked into the raised shields of the marble heroes of antiquity who face outwards from the terrace. Windbreaks in the form of diving eagles and swooping harriers.

It is a living chronicle to history. Far from the earth, it reminds those who dwell within of their connection and their debt to the past. Antique beauty atop a technological marvel: no metaphor can say more than the Spire of Stars.

A titan whom could call those mythical heroes in all their exaggerated stature ‘brother’ leans against a pallisade built from interlocking state emblems. The carafe of wine in his hand is ice-cold, a formulation of his own devising. The crushed grapes were meticulously prepared in a vineyard far across the planet in a forgotten, temperate valley whose owner prostrated himself before the titan had even a chance to beg use of it.

Every element of the evening had been planned, exacting and precise. The formation and musical stylings of the Grand Company players were timed to the second, their verses and scores vetted exclusively by the Spire’s owner himself.

All things proceeded in their time and place. It was a perfect performance.

And yet the titan still looks out over his jewelled world, unready -- or unable -- to meet his companion’s eyes. He draws courage from the scene, but it is not enough to quell the uneasiness he feels. Everything was perfect.

But was it enough? Was it satisfactory?

He dared not ask.

The barest whisper of permitted wind ruffled his evening attire. Even in the heart of his foremost retreat, even with all the ease of leisure, he wears stiff, orderly black, a fine-cut robe lined with the heraldry of his adoptive family, cuffed in white and studded with discreet pearls from the barely-explored underseas. His hair, close-cropped, does nothing to hide the scars of war, nor the grafted implants that interface with his great suit of command armour.

About his neck, a heavy golden medallion hangs like an anvil, the symbol of Unity. A tiny grille at the mouth of the left eagle-head crackles a moment.

“You should speak to her,” issues a voice, softly feminine but edged with mirth. The titan tenses involuntarily to hear it, then relaxes: she is not taking joy from his discomfort, only the light pricking of pride all siblings delight in. “Unless you brought her all this way only to admire your back, brother.”

“What do I say?”

“I thought you knew everything! Why not the works on Sagitar, or the new flotilla of submersibles?”

“The Sagitar would make--”

“_Don’t you dare_ start talking about the stadium, or I’ll come up there and _feed_ you the plans.”

The titan began to snap a reply, his ire rising, and bit down on the words as he felt the presence at his side. He raised a hand self-consciously to the activation stud on the necklace-vox, cutting the line. It was an act of true bravery, for now, he had to contest with the battle before him without allies, no matter how sharp-tongued and hectoring as they might be.

“You never told me how beautiful your home was,” the voice at his side ventured. It was not the idea of grace or wile; it was hoarse from burning vehicles and tattered by the bellow of commands, forward and back across the Imperium. “Or how tactically belligerent. I appreciated your use of black powder and tanks but through this morass? Now that’s genius if I ever saw it.”

Her grin lit the night like a comet.

“Personally, I’d have set charges on every damn crag and collapsed the peaks on every fool who fought me. But that’s human thinking, eh? No sight of the bigger picture.”

The titan sighed and forced himself to look down.

She was not what the heroic stories stated a woman should be, nor had he performed some great deed, slain some great beast, or won her affection with some token. Her tawny hair, forever stained by smoke and battlefield stress, was a bare few inches longer than his own. In an unconscious echo of the titan’s own inability to separate from technology, a comm-bead hooked delicately around one half-chewed ear, the thin black cording adhesively-sealed to her larynx for sub-vocal commands.

Her evening wear had been, in some surrender to decorum, haphazardly improved: every second button on her formal tunic shone, and someone had made a good effort with black polish on her knee-high boots. The braids, however, were unrecoverable, even after a thorough and discreet search of the Spire for golden thread.

“You cannot do everything,” the titan said. It was true for all of the species: they were too brief, too limited, to accomplish everything. But it was, in cosmic unfairness, always expected of him. No weakness or failure would be tolerated. “The direct path is sometimes best.”

“You’re hedging. Say what you mean.”

The titan took a deep breath, searching for calm. Searching for the middle ground. That, in itself, ran contrary to much of his initial thoughts: how dare he be questioned by a human? If he held something back, it was for him and him alone to decide. He wielded words as effectively as tank or Marine or bolter or battle group: he would not be provoked to further revelation. He would not-

“I came into this world knowing everything, or so I believed.” he began, instead. A pause. His companion twirled her fingers, the ‘advance’ gesture for when the tank vox was non-functional. The titan smiled, an action that resembled continental plates crashing together, fusing into something protean and grand.

“There were no mysteries in the alchemical formulae, nor the working of stone and steel. In my mind, I could see every great project before I committed it to paper -- these monuments, these towers, these theatres and pavilions are dreams realised.”

He gestured out at the lands below the Spire, their far-off lights winking on as the sun departed over the mountainous horizon.

“Once, perhaps, I would have endured their imperfections, the fallibility of their masons, the rare misaligned mortar or chipped brick. Now, I find delight in them, that flavour of unique being that can only be wrought by the imperfect. They are not valuable things because they are works of genius, but because they are realistic. I have… learned to… enjoy realism.”

Again, a gesture, this time at what surrounded them: the Spire, the terrace, all things made by his hand.

“I did not make these things for my world, or for any man, though I share them freely with all who ask. I have come to accept that people cannot be forced, but must be led: through example, through inspiration.”

And this time, to the stars above.

“I do not fight for glory or adulation. The tasks I am set by my father are difficult, but they are set because only I may surmount them. There are things that only I may do. Here, on Olympia, or out there, across our fledgeling Imperium -- I am proud to be who I am and ask for nothing that is not already given. I break this ground so that the path will be easier for all who follow.”

A nod, self-affirming, unshakeable.

“Once, I felt that… I only destroyed what I could not control. A child unable to keep from fits of rage. Even in the barest things, I could not… loosen my grip. But now I understand, I think, the needs of humanity. And at least, I can delight in them, that blissful unknowing, the joy of what will, or may, happen next.”

“You talk like you’re not human yourself,” she replied, the words a question, but her tone sincere. “You’re different, yes, but you’re not…”

She shook her head. “The Emperor wouldn’t have wanted that. I can’t imagine any parent would want that for their son. You’d never be... “

“Content?” the titan ventured.

“Happy was the word I was thinking of.”

The titan looked over his beautiful world. He thought of his Legion, bringing peace to the galaxy, his own sons who looked on him with adoration, who did their best to emulate him in thought and deed. He thought of them in their great halls of strategy, their carved wooden die, their abacuses, their vid-screen simulations, their painted miniatures -- each wonderful in their uniqueness, their own way of seeing the world, their own way of being true to their individual visions.

He thought of the delight people took in the realisation of his public works, how the aqueducts brought water up from the hidden rivers for the thirsty, how the theatres and sanatoriums gave place for arts and science to flourish.

He thought of how the Spire of Stars must look to those below. He thought of how they must see that warm glow on the terrace, and how they must think of their lord and protector, working into the night to secure their future.

“Perhaps I am,” he said. “Happy.”

“You should mention that to your father, sometime.”

He grimaced. “Which one?”

“Dorn, too.”

“Absolutely not.”

Night fell on Olympia at last. The mountains surrendered their haloes of fire. We draw back from the Spire and the warm glow of the terrace, for words are spoken there that we shall not intrude upon, for a demigod’s privacy is a rare and special thing indeed.

Think instead of Calliphone’s own shied smile as she descends her own tower, far away.

She knows better than we.


End file.
